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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Nov. 15, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
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JUAN BOSCH DIES IN DOMINICAN REPUBLIC:
A POPULAR PRESIDENT TOPPLED BY U.S.
By Oscar Ovalles
On Nov. 1, after a long period of medical complications and
at the age of 92, Juan Bosch died in Santo Domingo, capital
of the Dominican Republic. Bosch was a Dominican political
leader who during the 1940s and 1950s, with a group of men
and women in exile, organized an armed and ideological
struggle against the dictatorship of Rafael L. Trujillo.
Trujillo directed a bloody regime that oppressed the
Dominican people for over 30 years, from 1930 to1961. He had
taken power with the approval of the U.S. Army, which had
first occupied the Dominican Republic from 1916 to 1924
after an armed invasion.
Trujillo was killed in May 1961. A political convulsion
shook the country almost immediately. U.S. advisors were
omnipresent, trying hard to keep in power the remains of
Trujillism, while the people were demanding deep political
changes.
After endless internal conflict, the Dominican people
finally got what they wanted: the return from exile of
Professor Juan Bosch and the celebration of democratic
elections for the first time in almost half a century.
On Dec. 20, 1962, Bosch was elected president of the
republic by an overwhelming majority. He soon let the people
know that the struggle for freedom, democracy and all other
social conquests must be directed against the oligarchy,
which was emerging as a substitute for Trujillism.
Bosch defined the social classes in the Dominican Republic
according to their role in the relations of production. In
very simple language understood by the people, he called the
bourgeoisie "tutum potes," an irreverent word meaning big
and powerful. He called the workers "hijos de Machepa," sons
of Machepa, a popular term for "nobody."
During the next seven months, the new president initiated
strong social reforms in agriculture and industry. In the
eyes of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, it looked like a
repeat of the socialist government of Fidel Castro in Cuba.
However, the bourgeoisie had not been defeated in the
Dominican Republic as it was in Cuba.
U.S. BEHIND OVERTHROW OF BOSCH
By late September 1963, a series of anti-communist protests,
led by important business groups and with the support of
high Dominican military officers, began in the capital,
Santo Domingo. Finally, on the morning of Sept. 25, 1963,
the Bosch government was overthrown with the support and
assistance of the Pentagon and the U.S. government. The
excuse was "the danger of communism and corruption."
Fidel Castro said from Havana on Sept. 29 that "Professor
Juan Bosch was overthrown because he refused to be an
instrument for imperialism." Castro also suggested that "the
U.S. government was behind the deposing of Bosch" (El
Caribe, Sept. 29, 1963).
Adm. William E. Ferral, U.S. naval district commander, had
arrived in the Dominican Republic on Sept. 23, 1963, and
remained in the country until noon of Sept. 25. "Adm. Ferral
was with President Bosch at an official reception just six
hours before the coup," wrote Victor Grimaldi in the book
"El Misterio del Golpe de 1963" ("The Mystery of the 1963
Coup"). Bosch was then deported to Puerto Rico.
Two years later, on April 24, 1965, a civil war began,
headed by two progressive military leaders--Cols. Francisco
Alberto Caamaño and Rafael Fernandez Dominguez. With the
full support of the people, who they armed after occupying
the barracks, they demanded Bosch's return to power and a
constitutional government.
On April 28, as the rebels were winning, Washington sent
over 42,000 U.S. Mar ines to frustrate this new revolution.
After the military intervention, the Organization of
American States set up elections for a year later. On May
16, 1966, after a year of U.S. occupation, the president for
whose return all the people had fought was defeated by the
U.S. candidate, Joaquin Balaguer. It was later proven that
there had been massive election fraud.
After that, Bosch said he no longer believed in "democracy
American-style."
Juan Bosch spent his later years trying to regain the
presidency, proposing a national liberation government and
independence from U.S. policy. In the 1970s he proclaimed
himself a Marxist. Until his final days, Professor Bosch was
a friend of the revolutionary process around the world.
In the middle 1980s, during a conference in Cuba about
democracy in Latin America, Bosch, the author of "From
Christopher Columbus to Fidel Castro: the Caribbean,
Imperial Frontier," said he had learned that the struggle in
Latin America and the Caribbean is not between democracy and
dictatorship, it's between socialism and capitalism.
- END -
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